


The Devil's Garden

by rhodrymavelyne



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:14:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27310267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhodrymavelyne/pseuds/rhodrymavelyne
Summary: The devil’s garden blooms and many of his victims feel prettier than they’ve ever been, while some feel just neglected. All of the other flowers are jealous of Will Graham, whom is clearly the devil’s favorite even if Will himself doesn’t understand their envy.
Relationships: Abel Gideon/Hannibal Lecter, Bedelia Du Maurier/Hannibal Lecter, Francis Dolarhyde/Hannibal Lecter, Francis Dolarhyde/Will Graham, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26





	The Devil's Garden

**Author's Note:**

> This is after the season has ended and things have gotten seriously surreal. Not only are the dead talking, they’re blooming. Hey, anything is possible in Will Graham’s imagination. I don’t own Hannibal but for months it has owned me.

Midnight flowers bloomed in the devil’s garden. Will lay among them, breathed them in, feeling the soil seep into his clothes. 

After all, he was one of the blossoms, coming into full flower. A corpse Hannibal Lecter coaxed something to grow out of, no matter how much he screamed. 

“Look at me, I’m pretty.” Abel Gideon turned his head to the side, vines covered with leaves and tiny purple blooms sprouting out of the stumps where legs and arms should have been. Snails slid over the vines with an almost sensuous grace. “You should be happy, Mr. Graham. Happy you’re so pretty. The Chesapeake Ripper did very little exterior work to you.”

“He scarred me.” How inept, how pathetic that sounded when talking to a man whose limbs had been devoured, whose remains had been abandoned in another man’s home. “He almost ate my brain.”

“He’d never eat my brain.” Franklyn was almost in tears, lying like a discarded doll, only a few daisies popping out of his ears and nostrils. “I wish I was pretty. Hannibal never thought I was pretty.”

“Don’t be tiresome.” Tobias lay with his arms stretched out, a willing victim while foxglove shot up from his legs and torso, his expensive vest and shirt undone to allow the tiny bell-like clusters to burst forth. “Everyone in the Devil’s Garden gets to be pretty eventually.”

“Yes, but no one is prettier than him.” The Great Red Dragon looked out of Francis Dolarhyde’s dead eyes, speaking through a mouthful of red camellias. Skin became scales, scales became bark, and the Dragon loomed over Will like a tree offering him shade, petals red as blood opening all over him. “Once I thought you were not at all handsome, Will Graham, but in truth you are more beautiful than any of us.” 

“This is because Hannibal lavishes more care upon him than the rest of us.” Will turned his head to see Bedelia Du Maurier lying beside him in the shade of the Great Red Dragon. She turned her head to speak through a mouthful of roses, the same roses blooming from her throat. Not red roses but white. “A garden grows on love. The more love lavished upon what you plant, the lovelier the flowers.”

Will wanted to protest that he wasn’t a flower, he wasn’t going to bloom, he’d stopped himself from blooming. He’d gone over the cliff, scattering himself and whatever Hannibal tried to make of him. He stopped, his protests dying in his throat when he looked down at his own chest. 

Antlers were sprouting, growing, each one with a delicate pink blossom clinging to its branching glory. Each blossom whispered with the voice of someone he’d killed. 

“This is your becoming,” Garrett Jacob Hobbs, Randall Tier, and Francis Dolarhyde all whispered with one voice. “Why deny it?”

Will tried to summon the protests, no, this wasn’t his choice, this wasn’t what he wanted to be, his choices had to count for something. Only he couldn’t speak over the flowers filling his mouth. 

“This is your design, Will.” It was Hannibal speaking with such soft, intimate seductiveness. He stood over Will in the form of the stag man, the same pink flowers blooming from his own antlers, each petal whispering. “You’ve made your design mine and altered mine forever. Don’t deny its beauty.” 

No, he couldn’t. Not any more. Even if he didn’t want to be part of it, Will Graham couldn’t deny its beauty. 

“Do you really wish to be apart from this?” Hannibal knelt down, fearless of the antlers in all their seeking sharpness. He found the vulnerable flesh of Will’s cheek and stroked it, becoming human once more himself. Human and ever so loving. “Do you really want to be apart from me?”

Will shut his eyes. God help him, he didn’t. As horrifying as the devil’s garden was in its beauty, as horrifying as Hannibal could be, he didn’t want to be apart from him. 

And just what did that make him? A willing part of the Devil’s Garden, part of his design. 

No, there had to be more than that. It couldn’t just end this way. Only perhaps it was always meant to end this way. 

Will was no longer sure when his silent scream had become a song or what that song would alter in the world. 

No matter what Hannibal said, this wasn’t his design. It never had been. 

Only Will wasn’t its enemy anymore. He wasn’t sure what he was, but he wasn’t its enemy. He hadn’t finished blooming yet. Who knew what his final form would be?

Not even Hannibal could say.


End file.
